Before I start crying wolf, I just was curious if anyone else has noticed some pretty bizarre behavior when encoding in AME CS4--specifically, AME seems to take significantly longer to encode assets or sequences that really shouldn't take as long as they do. This is with the latest update to AME (4.0.2), though at present I can't measure this in 4.0.1 for comparison.

In particular, factors include:

1) Dynamically-linked sequences, either sent from PPro or using the "Add Premiere Pro Sequence" item in AME
2) DV AVI footage as a source
3) MPEG-2 as a destination format, with DVD specifications
4) No major calisthenics being exercised on the source footage, or during the export process

I realize this is a little vague, but before I go into extended detail, I'd like to know if anyone else has encountered slow-as-molasses exports with the above items. If so, I think I might have uncovered a pretty huge bug, and a workaround that has to be seen to be believed. I have to work out some controlled way to test my theory, and then run the test and screen capture it to illustrate it.

Part of me hopes I'm crazy--the other part doesn't realize I am. Thank you for feeding my madness :)

That's precisely what I'm discovering. Using the same sequence and same footage, going to something else like DV AVI or to H.264, for example, is comparatively much faster. What I stumbled upon was a way to "jar" AME into processing MPEG-2 much faster when using these sources, though it's still a little flaky. In any event, encoding is several orders of magnitude faster.

I need to do a serious test, and make sure it's not just a fluke. Incidentally, were these reports of people using 4.0.1 or 4.0.2?